It’s Shut Down Mania! Trump threatens to shut down the government for a “very long time” if the Senate does not pass a bill with $5 billion for his Great Wall of ‘Merica. Despite what he said during his meeting with Chuck and Nancy, He’s blaming the Democrats.

Mad Dog Mattis resigns as Trump’s Defense Secretary. Mattis’s resignation letter is widely seen as a protest against Trump’s announcement that he wants U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan. Mattis also objected with Trump alienating allies and embracing autocratic regimes like China and Russia. German officials call it “a moment of alarm in Europe.”

Democrats say ixnay to the Green New Deal committee championed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other newly elected progressives. Instead, Democrats tapped Florida Democrat, Rep. Kathy Castor to head a revived House panel on climate change. Castor didn’t waste any time embracing Exxon Mobil’s talking points, arguing it might be “unconstitutional” to ban members from the committee who are flush with Big Oil and Gas money. Despite being hugely popular, Democrats still can’t get it through their head that a Green New Deal is the way forward. Here’s a little tidbit about Castor: According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Castor accepted more than $73,000 from the energy and natural resources sector during her Congressional career. That includes $60,000 from corporate political action committees.

Climate agreement in Poland helps to bolster the Paris Agreement. The agreement established a rule book for how countries should measure their greenhouse gas emissions, report on emissions cuts and hold each other accountable. However, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait blocked language “welcoming” a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that concluded the world must limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or face catastrophic impacts.

Hackers broke into NASA servers and downloaded Social Security numbers and other personal info. NASA officials say they still don’t know the total number of employees that were affected.

Stephen Caruso from Pennsylvania Legislative Services wrote an excellent report on how Southeast Democrats were unified under the leadership of Madeleine Dean and were able to pick up 5 of 7 House leadership positions.

It’s been over a month and I can barely remember the guy who ran against Gov. Wolf in November.

In today’s Last Call, Gritty and Sean’s tattoo plans.

The Pentagon is finalizing a proposal for the Space Force as a sixth military branch. According to a draft of the proposal, the Space Force would be organized under the Department of the Air Force, kind of like the Marines are organized as an independent service under the Navy.

It’s a White Christmas on Mars. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe beamed back images of a 50 mile wide Martian crater filled with ice. The Korolev crater is on the northern pole plane which surrounds Mars’s polar ice cap. The crater contains 530 cubic miles of water ice and is a mile thick in places.